Eastman Invocations I

Interlude: We Have Delivered Ourselves from the Tonal – Of, with, towards, on Julius EastmanThe curators introduce the research and programme. Making sense of the growing interest in Julius Eastman’s work.

Music, Myth, Man – Eastman.A focus on Julius Eastman’s life and music with contemporaries, friends, peers and researchers.

Minimal Music – Maximal Politics.The East Coast in the 1970s and 1980s: a closer look into the political and social contexts that gave way to Julius Eastman’s work

“We Have Delivered Ourselves from the Tonal – Of, towards, on, for Julius Eastman” deliberates around concepts beyond the Western notions of the tonal and harmonic through an exhibition, performances, concerts and a symposium. The project looks at how Afro-American composer, musician and performer Julius Eastman and his eclectic artistic practices manifest within cultural, political and spiritual realms during his lifetime until today.

By commissioning new artistic works and texts, as well as engaging with oral history and theoretical discourse, the intention is to reflect and re-engage with the legacy of Eastman’s work together with musicians, visual artists, researchers and archivists. Exploring a non-linear genealogy of Eastman’s minimalist practice, the project situates his work within a broader field of relations of musical epistemologies and practices. The aim is to read Eastman’s work not only within its musical sensitivity, structure, and texture, but also to consider Eastman as a political being.